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Supervisors pump up scare actors at Knott's Berry Farm by asking them to scream during a training session on Tuesday, Sept. 17. Actors are selected after auditions in the summer.

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Scare actor Mariah Robinson takes part in a rehearsal for the Dominion of the Damned maze at Knott's Berry Farm. Forty actors work in this vampire-themed maze.

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Scare actor John B. Jensen has been acting in mazes Knott's Scary Farm for two decades. He will play a crypt keeper this year.

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Fake bodies hang from a ceilingless room in the Black Magic maze. Knott's designer Daniel Miller based the maze on magician Harry Houdini, who conducted séances to contact his mother after her death.

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Forty scare actors fill the Black Magic maze at Knott's Scary Farm. After the rehearsal, the actors will have one dress rehearsal before opening on Sept. 26.

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Scare actors take part in a series of run-throughs in the Black Magic maze, as design supervisors walk through and give guidance.

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Amber Castillo has been a scare actor for four years at Knott's Scary Farm. This year she will play a seductive vampire.

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Set designers come up with maze ideas at least one year in advance, sometimes several years. In the Black Magic maze, designer Daniel Miller asked actors to come up with a story of how their character died in the theater.

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Ethan Gardner has been a scare actor for seven years. This will be his second year playing a seductive vampire. "I know seductive pretty well, it just comes out naturally," he said. "Scary isn't difficult."

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Jacqueline Caceres plans out how she will move through her assigned room in the Dominion of the Damned maze. She has been randomly placed with the same room partner, Amber Castillo, for the last three years.

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Scare actors wait to find out what rooms and partners they've been assigned to at the Dominion of the Damned maze. .

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Each room in the Black Magic maze has a different theme – knife throwing, a blind magician doing magic tricks with eyeballs, and a haunted prop room.